


with bound tongue

by morningstar921



Series: pity poor flesh and bones [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AKA the one that escapes with the tesseract, Anxiety, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Multiverse Loki, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, loki has a minor anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21626362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningstar921/pseuds/morningstar921
Summary: After escaping the Avengers with the Tesseract, the first thing Loki does is try to remove this damn muzzle.
Series: pity poor flesh and bones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578193
Comments: 2
Kudos: 77





	with bound tongue

The Tesseract skids across the floor. Like a miracle, it lands at Loki’s feet and nobody seems to notice but him, all thanks to that hulking green brute throwing a tantrum ten feet away. Loki does not hesitate to bend down, grasp it fully in both bound hands, and steal away silently in a ripple of space.

* * *

There is no rhyme or reason to his destination. There is only the singular thought of escape. Escape the Avengers and the destruction of New York. Escape Asgard and Odin’s wrath. Escape the Nine Realms, who would sooner turn him over to Asgard than be caught harboring a fugitive in their midst. Escape the Mad Titan too, who…

_No barren moon._

He never thought he’d make it this far. Far enough to have nowhere to go at all.

Loki steps out of the Tesseract into a muddy Midgardian forest where low-hanging mist wraps around his boots. Better to stay on this backwater planet, he supposes, than anywhere else, even with Thor lurking around. Running from Thor’s new gaggle would be laughably easy.

_No barren moon, where he will not find you._

Loki stumbles. His fingers go numb and the Tesseract drops from his hands. There is suddenly not enough air and not enough space in this disgustingly damp forest. The Titan sent him here, and he remains here, and if that’s not the worst idea Loki has ever had… But to flit from planet to planet, out where Sanctuary might have the gall to go itself, would just as suicidal. Wouldn’t it?

His breath is caught in his throat. The muzzle Thor affixed to his jaw seems to have gotten tighter as though it were trying to latch to the bone itself. Eyes clamped shut, fingers shaking offbeat to his stuttering heart, Loki scrambles at the edges of the muzzle. He’s seen many a prisoner marched in and out of Odin’s court with a muzzle, but he’d never paid much attention to the mechanics. He finally finds a small latch hidden in the pulse point beneath his ear and presses it hard enough to force the feeling back into his fingertips. The muzzle falls loose to the forest floor. Loki collapses with it, heaving in great bursts of air.

He stays there for a minute, knees pressed into the damp soil. Like a taunt in his skull, _no barren moon, no barren moon_ resounds ceaselessly. His body aches, his mind aches. He threads his fingers through his hair, made clumsy by the manacles around his wrists, and recoils at the shine of grease it leaves behind, the specks of dandruff that come loose. He is dirty, and he is starving. “Norns help me, I can’t do this,” he gasps, and he is tired. 

_No barren moon._

Loki snarls suddenly. He never thought he’d make it this far but he _did._ Damn it all, he _did._ Loki picks himself off the ground, wipes the mud from his tattered armor, and stands straighter than he has for a while. He is Loki of Asgard. The Mad Titan will not threaten him again. He will not go crying to Asgard, will not cave to Odin’s whims or bequeath himself to Thor. 

The Tesseract is at his feet, its light serenely blue in the dim forest. Still bound in cuffs, Loki picks it up again and cradles it to his chest. He’ll have these cuffs off as soon as he can snag a key from Asgard. Right from under Odin’s nose, and the thought is enough to put a smirk on Loki’s face.

“The only question now,” he murmurs, “is where to go after?” Then, starting into the writhing light of the cube, it hits him: if time and space are entangled on the continuum, might the Tesseract be capable of manipulating both?

No barren moon, indeed. Not in this timeline. So how about another’s?

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily considering a continuation of this. As in, a story about Multiverse Loki's romp through the multiverse. AKA what I imagine the Loki series will be, but before it ever comes out. AKA an excuse for me to keep messing with him, poor boy.


End file.
